Building an Online Network
Behind the scenes of the launch of Meredith’s Women’s Network.
Meredith Corp. announced in January the launch of its Women’s Network, a portal for the company’s collection of women’s Web sites. The overall strategy was to tie together online brands to extend reach to help advertisers market their audience at scale. The key to success, however, is a tight commonality between the brands.
The network will consist of three sub-networks: Better Homes and Gardens (including Better Homes and Gardens and Better Recipes), Parenting (including Parents, American Baby and Family Circle) and the Real Girls Network (DivineCaroline, Fitness, More and Ladies’ Home Journal). Meredith acquired a minority stake in the Real Girls Media Network, a group of online women’s social communities, about two months prior to the network’s launch.
“We started the network by looking at our core brands and there was a strong commonality between the assets that we have,” says Lauren Weiner, SVP, Meredith Interactive.
From there the genesis for the Women’s Network was formed around the desire of advertisers to reach an audience all at once. “Advertisers are looking to reach women at scale,” says Wiener. “By pulling [the sites] together, we can reach the most engaged audience, but at great scale.”
Social Networking Plays a Big Role
Wiener notes that Meredith had the depth in expert content—i.e., magazine and original online editorial content—but needed to ramp up quickly in social media. “We’ve seen a growing trend of advertisers looking for social media presence.”
That triggered the investment in the Real Girls Media Network and the launch of a new site called Mixing Bowl, a social networking site for food enthusiasts, to help supplement the expert content with social media.
All of the Meredith ‘megabrand’ sites, says Wiener, are on the same platform, which allows easy content sharing and there are plans in place to incorporate blogging voices from the other sites into the bigger brand sites.
Other benefits, says Wiener, are the SEO spikes that come from the combined heft of the network, and an “overarching” database that’s behind all the properties which allows for targeted advertising campaigns.
Key to moving forward with the network strategy was the vertical slice the sites occupied, all serving women ages 25-54. “The difference between a branded network and an ad network is a brand is centered around excellent content and community, which leads to high engagement. It was a natural to take those assets and put them into a network for our advertisers,” says Wiener.
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